Emergency Care of Gunshot Wounds
(3 hours: Basic, Intermediate and Paramedic levels)
Purpose: To enhance the EMTs knowledge of demographics and statistics, firearms, wounding mechanism, and prehospital care and treatment of gunshot wounds.
Goal: To refresh and update the knowledge base of EMTs pertaining to various gunshot wounds to the body that will enable the EMT to care for such injuries.
- Introduction (5 minutes)
- Demographics and Statistics (10 minutes)
- Incidence
- Risk groups
- Mortality and morbidity
- Firearms (20 minutes)
- Firearm types
(rifles, shotguns, pistols, revolvers, semiautomatic, automatic)
- Bullet types
(ball, soft point, hollow point, metal jacket, wad-cutter, slug, shot)
- Ballistics
- Wounding Mechanisms (25 minutes)
- Blast injury
- Cavitation
- Crush
- Embolization
- Fractures
- Laceration
- Perforation
- Prehospital Treatment of Penetrating Injuries (45 minutes)
- Assessment
- Airway - special considerations for trauma victims
- Breathing
- Pneumothorax
- Hemothorax
- Flail chest
- Pulmonary contusion
- Circulation
- Hemorrhage
- Hypovolemia
- Cardiac Tamponade
- Embolus
- Deficits
- Nerve damage
- Head injuries
- Bone and ligament injuries
- Medical Care (20 minutes)
- Trauma room
- Assessment
- ALS priorities (IVs, Intubation)
- Complications (20 minutes)
- Compartment syndrome
- Hematoma
- Infection
- Pneumothorax
- Peritonitis
- Rhabdomyolysis
- Organ failure
- Functional incapacity
- Medical/Legal Aspects (20 minutes)
- Chain of custody
- Mandatory reporting
- Forensic considerations
- Preserving evidence
- Review of Region I protocols (10 minutes)
- Questions and Answers (5 minutes)
Con-ed Outlines || Education || Home